QED

A Logie-Worthy Performance

Roger Franklin

Telegenic Muslim women never lack for invitations to go before the ABC’s cameras and put a happy face on their religion, not least when one or other bloody outrage demands a very special brand of cultural contextualizing. Q&A newcomer Raihan Ismail can look forward to many more close-ups

That Q&A refuses to expand diversity with an odd Buddhist, Mormon or a Wiccan is a pity but no real mystery. Those creeds’ adherents don’t demand constant attention to their grievances or grow immediately and explosively tetchy at perceived slights and insults, nor do many of their children conclude that gunning down innocents is just the shot – literally – to advance the spiritual side of things. Islam is a religion that needs smiley faces on its talking heads and Ms Ismail exemplified both of those required attributes. With Anne Aly, now a federal Labor candidate, and Carland, who is also Mrs Waleed Aly, forever in the running, competition for the spotlight is already fierce and bound to grow more intense. Factor in as well that the ranks of those eager to explore hijab’d hermaneutics include Ruby Hamad and MiriamVeiszadeh, plus variously veiled others, and the simple truth is that there are more microphone-ready Muslimas than available TV spots to accommodate them.

Until the next shooting or knife attack, when it will be all hands on deck to remind us that Islam is the religion of peace, the ABC and SBS are obliged to put a ceiling on the number of seats available to otherness. Neither broadcaster, for example, would dream of inviting an Islamic spokesperson to discuss the right of crossdressing schoolboys’ to hang out in girls’ lavatories. Much better to assault the imagined homophobia of Middle Australia than embarrass representatives of a religion whose more ardent acolytes delight in throwing homosexuals off tall buildings.

Ms Ismail’s aplomb was evident from the start. There was the cultist hijab to remind viewers of their hateful prejudices, as in ‘yes, she is wrapped up in seventh-century couture because her menfolk demand it — but, seriously, that doesn’t mean she isn’t a thoroughly modern woman.’ There were de rigueur explanations that Islam is not a monolith, with the advice that ISIS’s representation of the faith is counterbalanced by Saudi Arabia’s opposition to it. As fellow panellist Eldad Beck wryly noted, if the Saudis represent the good guys then there are no good guys.

And Ms Ismail did particularly well on the one area all of the ABC’s Islamic good-will ambassadors are required to get absolutely down pat: the great burden of staying afloat in the raging sea of Australia’s xenophobic racism. If this gripe had not been invented it would need to exist in order to justify the poor-me wailing of those who enjoy it so. Where would commissioners and commissars of political correctness hope to find gainful employment if the grievance cartels had not thrived, as they have over recent, taxpayer-funded decades? Why, the Human Rights Commission’s Tim Soutphommasane would still be a modest Labor historian dodging questions from Gerard Henderson about dubious scholarship and mysterious sources! Now he can hand out Frisbees emblazoned with touching slogans and pocket $320,000+ per year. Good work if your mates can get it for you.

“When it comes to Muslims living in this country it is already quite difficult,” Ms Ismail said, which rather overlooked how difficult it is becoming for everyone else. As an avowed Manly Sea Eagles supporter, she must have noticed the security checks – the bag searches and friskings — imposed on those attending that ground and others. Somehow, before the cultural enrichment of official multiculturalism, admirers of bull-necked men running headlong into each other were able to walk right into the ground with nary a thought for bombs or berserkers. Still, that’s the price we must pay for the blessing of the kebab and tabouleh, terrorism being a mere “irritant”, as Waleed Aly presents it. Those handbag searches, lockdowns, sieges, midnight raids, riots, cat-meat sheiks and female genital mutilation clinics, they are the collateral consequences of the wizards of multiculturalism’s grand plan to make Australia a better, jollier place, not like the nasty, boring nation of old.

While all of the above established Ms Ismail as a front-rank contender in the battle of the Burka’d Belles – covering up from head to foot being another of the valid ways she saw as establishing Muslim identity and not necessarily an indication of “radicalisation” – it was her set-piece presentation of the Koran as the catalyst for open, honest and pacific debate that must surely have locked in many future ABC invitations. Those inconveniently blood-thirsty bits about, for example, striking at the neck and killing unbelievers and imposing taxes on subjects who rate Mohammad – rate him quietly if they are wise – an egomaniacal warlord whose inner voices, conveniently, just happened to endorse whatever political and strategic initiatives were appropriate to the moment, even to the extent of contradicting earlier admonitions and angelic instructions. Such items of Koranic counsel weren’t mentioned on Q&A. Instead, viewers were treated by Ms Ismail to a thumbnail summation of doctrinal debates about the Koran’s endorsement of one wife, four wives, or ten. Other than its unexplored relevance to the rorting of the welfare system, this topic seemed beside the point in any discussion of what to do with the head-loppers of ISIS.

Mind you, that discussion never had a chance, as Ms Ismail is a graduate of the Waleed Aly Academy of Inverted Consequences, the principle strand of the curriculum being that bombing, killing and destroying an enemy only makes him stronger. This would explain why the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki did so much to promote bushido, not to mention Germans’ enduring reverence for their Austrian corporal.

OK, sorry. Forgive the sarcasm. But when the national broadcaster fosters an alternate reality in which favoured players are free to strut and preen, to dissemble and misdirect, it’s hard not to follow the cues, leap through the looking glass and join the fun.

Yes, in the Multicultural Muslima Welter it will be a rough and tumble race for the national broadcaster’s prime-time attentions, but bet on Ms Ismail, this talented newcomer, to lead the pack into this year’s Logies. (…and the award for Best Islamic Rationaliser in Dramatic Mascara goes to…..)

Why it is that such a small segment of the population — just two-and-a-bit per cent by Ms Ismail’s Q&A reckoning — requires so many apologists is a question the ABC long ago concluded is best not considered.

10 comments

Raihan Ismail’s undeniable aesthetic appeal on Q&A was cruelly overshadowed by her sophistry and obfuscation, coupled with her obvious lack of having anything of substance to contribute to the weightier aspects of the dialogue. Another quintessentially ABC event.

No apology for sarcasm is necessary. I actually read it as an extended exercise in irony, but no matter. And following up on Keith Kennelly’s point: thank you for enduring an ABC broadcast so the rest of us don’t have to.

ian.macdougall –24th February 2016

Enough of these middle of the road generalisations. Which do you rate the worst of the fare available on the ABC?
(BTW my old CRT TV gave up the ghost in the middle of Q&A the other night. When the repair man comes, I’ll get him to check that Roger’s not got stuck in there somehow while trying to gatecrash their party. Or Bill…)

acarroll –25th February 2016

Somewhat off topic but nonetheless a golden warning from the Arab historian Ibn Khaldun in his work Al Muqaddimah from 1377. I stumbled across this quote whilst researching the Persian origin of the so-called Golden Age of Islam (thoroughly propagandised now):

“The natural talent of Arabs is the plundering and exploitation of others. Belongings of others inspire them to theft and robbery. They feed through their lances and swords, rob and plunder without moral boundaries; on the contrary, they steal everything on their path. If they, during their conquests, occupy a country they paid no attention to the heritage of the people; therefore the property by the occupiers are all violated and robbed.

This process reduces reduces prosperity and civilization dies out. They are also the reason why prosperity and a society become corrupted, because they ignore the artists, craftsmen and despise them […] A society’s wealth might disappear though the destruction of these professions.

Arabs did not bother to implement laws or rules against theft or aggression against citizens; the only thing they cared for was to obtain other people’s property through extortion and blackmail. Once this was achieved they knew no mercy for people and their well being. It was never their intention to improve a community but to find new ways to satisfy their greed and increase their wealth.

Ultimately, a nation controlled by Arabs lives in chaos and anarchy as if no statutory power exists. Chaos and destruction are causes for the destruction and corruption of wealth and civilization. This nation is naturally out to plunder and destroy, what they find, they take as booty […] Because of their nature it is hard for Arabs to accept authority as, on the basis of their characteristics, this rule would have the same degree brutality, greed and and rivalry that they impose on others. It seldom happens that they agree on anything. If, however, religious matters or possible conquests are involved Arabs unite and work together on a new road to victory.

And so, these Arabs, who are proud to eat scorpions and ticks, came together under the banner of the Prophet and undertook conquests in the direction of the Persian and Roman (Byzantine) empire. After destroying these empires they engaged themselves in earthly affairs and gathered enormous wealth. Any Arab conquest automatically entailed the destruction of the civilization in question as most cities were deserted by their inhabitants. Cultivated fields turned into a wasteland.

Yemen, a country with a history going back at least 3000 years, was left to ruins after the Islamic conquest. The Persian civilization in Iraq was completely destroyed. The same scenario took place in Syria. The Southern Arabian tribes Banu Hilal en Banu Sulaym, who penetrated Morocco and Tunisia and fought each other over 350 years to obtain local hegemony while destroying agricultural life. The areas between the Mediterranean and Sudan, which were has previously built and inhabited, are now just a desert, where ruins, flat terrains and only a few villages are left to to remind us that it once was a civilization.”

In that sentence is everything one needs to know, like a rabbit in the headlights we stand there frozen, watching our future bear down on us.

Peter OBrien –25th February 2016

Actually, David Kilcullen said ‘you can’t bomb an ideology’ Ismail just picked up on it.

mct –25th February 2016

David Kilcullen is well-meaning but wrong.

You don’t bomb the ideology, you bomb the ideologues.

And, so it would seem, that works treat-like.

gardner.peter.d –25th February 2016

I don’t watch Q&A. It’s bad for my blood pressure. Other people find that throwing things at what’s his name Jones and his rent-a-PC-avatars is good for their blood pressure. Anyway, Roger Franklin’s article is wonderfully witty and a great laugh. Perhaps I should tune in to Q&A after all.